This is a new edition. This second edition of Billy the Kid's Writings, Words, and Wit is the definitive study of the written and recorded words of Old West icon, William H. Bonney aka Billy the Kid. In hardback and paperback, it is 592 pages. All his known communications are presented in full: deposition, court transcript, bill of sale, letters, newspaper interviews, and quotes from contemporaries' memoirs. For the first time all his letters in original handwriting are reproduced together. Included is a new Billy the Kid letter to Governor Lew Wallace, authenticated by the author. As revisionist history, the text analyzes everything from his penmanship to his brilliance, and places his words in the context of his times: portraying him as a freedom fighter in the lost multi-cultural Lincoln County War against the land-grabbing political cabal of the Santa Fe Ring. Implications of Billy the Kid's writings are brought to the present day by discussion of the modern Santa Fe Ring and its 21st century attempt to hijack his by an historical hoax.
The author, Gale Cooper, a Harvard Medical School educated M.D. forensic psychiatrist, has published multiple books on Billy the Kid, and is his foremost revisionist historian.